El Salvador Day 2 Today we went to an orphanage that has had between 250-300 children the past 2 years. Today we only saw about 75 children between 3-13 years old. They told us that they had moved the older boys to another location. This orphanage and a couple others have new directors this year. We were only at the orphanage from 9:00 am – Noon. We were hoping that they would let us stay longer – but they didn’t. It also rained while we were there so we had to stay inside with the children. This required some flexibility on our part. We started the time with a bible lesson and then we prayed a blessing over the each child – they children love this! We then spent some time singing – some in Spanish and some in English. We improvised and played “Duck Duck Goose” and “Hot Potato” with them. They really enjoyed it. When the rain stopped we were allowed to go outside to play basketball, soccer, football, and jump rope. We were only outside for 5 minutes and the rain came again – so back inside we went. They allowed the children to jump rope inside – which really surprised us. You would be surprised at how many different games you can play with a jump rope. Several of them had the ropes tied around their waist as our team members held onto the ends. They pulled literally ran them around the cafeteria. If you can picture someone walking several dogs…that are running faster that you can walk…that is what it looked like…but it was the children instead of dogs. It was hilarious! Some had themselves tied up into trains – running around…one of the older nuns was in the middle of one group…too funny. This went on for a long time. At 11:45 they began to round up the children to tell us goodbye. They thanked us for our work and for continuing to visit. There were a couple of stories in this brief time that moved our team members. The first one was that one team members was able to see a little girl that had made a lasting impression on him last year. He was happy to see how she had grown. Last year she was shy and didn’t talk or answer questions and kind of hung back and had to be encouraged to join in with the others. This year she talked and answered his questions and played. Another thing that happened was during the time a few of our team members were visiting with the children 3-5 years old. A little boy came in and it was his first day. All of the other little boys went up to him and were hugging him and trying to get him to join in with them as they played. They were telling him that they loved him. It really touched a few of our team members to see how these little boys seemed to be genuinely concerned for him and how he was feeling. When we left the orphanage we went and ate at Pollo Campero – which is a big favorite here in El Salvador. We were then left trying to figure out what we were going to do with the entire afternoon. Our bus driver suggested that we drive up the mountain and view the city. It was nice – but we couldn’t see very well because it was very overcast and foggy. We climbed the trail to the top of the mountain and looked down at a crater. It was a nice afternoon. The team is looking forward to tomorrow because we will be able to spend the entire day at the orphanage. Oh…I almost forgot to mention that it was about 60-65 degrees on top of the mountain. It felt nice! Sorry – I just had to mention that we got both rain and cool weather here!!!